I'm back from the NRF show having been one of the lucky people who's flight was not canceled. The show was very crowded with a reported 20% increase in attendance and everyone seemed in high spirits. After two years of sluggish retail sales, things are really picking up and it was reflected in everyone's mood.

The pop-up Disney Store in the Oracle booth was great and attracted lots of interest in their mobile POS. I know many attendees visited the Disney Store in Times Square to see the entire operation. It's an impressive two-story store that keeps kids engaged.

The POS demonstration station, where most of our innovations were demoed, was always crowded. Unfortunately most of the demos used WiFi and the signals from other booths prevented anything from working reliably. Nevertheless, the demo team did an excellent job walking people through the scenarios and explaining how shopping is being impacted by mobile, analytics, and RFID.

Big Show Links
Disney uncovers its store magic
Top 10 Things You Missed at the NRF Big Show 2011
Oracle Retail Stores Innovation Station at NRF Big Show 2011 (video)

The buzz of the show was again around mobile solutions. Several companies are creating mobile POS using the iPod Touch, including integrations to Oracle POS for the following retailers:
>> Disney Stores with InfoGain
>> Victoria's Secret with InfoGain
>> Urban Outfitters with Starmount
>> The Gap with Global Bay

Keeping with the mobile theme, the NRF release a revised version of their Mobile Blueprint at NRF. It will be posted to the NRF site very soon. The alternate payments section had a major rewrite that provides a great overview and proximity and remote payment technologies.

NRF Mobile Blueprint Links
New mobile blueprint provides fresh insights
NRF Mobile Blueprint 2011 (slides)

I hope to do some posts on some of the interesting companies I spoke with in the coming weeks.